Post 3 potentially surprising admissions about yourself or heretofore unmentioned bits of personal arcana.

2. At age 11, I sang the boy soprano solo in Leonard Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC

3. When I took the AP English test in high school and scored a 5 (highest possible), one of my essays was actually based on the movie Passage to India rather than the book (which I had not read).

ps I was also afraid of sex for quite a while.

1. When I was about seven or so, I killed, ate and tanned the hide of a big brown snake. Although I recall the event fondly, there is a part of me that feels very cruel because of it. Also, I am now a vegetarian, so that might be part of it.

2. I know far too much about Australian native fruits and veg and edible weeds in general. I have scouted for and eaten stinging nettles and coffee made from the roasted root of a thistle. I could live off the land for quite some time if I had to I think.

3. I pissed my pants in the first year of highschool because we were sent on a 20km walkathon with no fucking portaloos. Oh, yes there were drinks to quench our thirst, but no where to get rid of it later. Fucking arseholes.

I think my Dad has a vhs of a dress rehearsal somewhere. My parents are both singers but I never liked singing. I do remember getting horny over the girls I sang in youth choir with though -- it was in this desperate sort of way because there were only a couple my age, and they weren't even *that* cute, especially in the white turtlenecks they had to wear.

At one point in college, when I went through a very anxious/depressed period and started to wonder if something was wrong with me, I had a brief "maybe this means I'm gay," phase, and I actually started corresponding with a guy who had written a story for McSweeney's that involved homosexuality, and asking him questions.

2) I was on my high school's "Comedy Sportz" team with Nick Swardson, who has been on Comedy Central a few times (they show a standup show of his every so often, and he's the rollerskating hustler on "Reno 911"). That's probably not much of a surprise, as I've mentioned that a couple times on ILx already. The fucked-up thing is that when Central's team went to the state "Comedy Sportz" finals -- think "Whose Line is it Anyway"-style improv -- I contributed significantly to our crushing loss. The rules state that if you do anything that causes the audience to groan, the team has to stage an apology, and if a team member does anything particularly inappropriate or in bad taste, they get "brown bagged" -- namely they have to wear a bag over their head. I forget the nature of the scene, but one of the team members put on a blonde wig and some fake boobs and started doing something desperate and hazardous, and my reply to this was something lame like "Dolly Parton! No! You have so much to live for!" This got a groan out of the audience, so after our bit we had to stage an apology. My brilliant idea was me to sing Nirvana's "All Apologies", which would conclude with me pantomiming shooting myself. That resulted in the brown bag, and the ensuing defeat. The kicker is, I didn't even do it accurately -- I pantomimed a pistol to the temple.

3) The first time pop music ever got me in trouble was when I was in grade school -- 4th grade, I think -- and the subject was transportation. When called upon to mention an example of transportation, my reply was "Little Red Corvette". This got me a time-out.

#1 is k-rad, nate.

also:

3c. I used to have a (presexual) hard-on for girls who wore bunny-sweaters with pom-pom tails, ESPECIALLY if they were irish. these were tremendously en vogue in massachusetts in the mid '80s, and i was indulged frequently. then i switched schools (twice) and when I ended-up in providence I was pretty disappointed at the lack of tacky sweaters.

1. I am a certified open water scuba diver. I got the certification in preparation for a high school biology course where we were offered the chance to study for a couple of weeks at a marine biology university in Jamaica. Unfortunately, I haven't been scuba diving since.

2. When I was 11, my uncle (who was involved in acting) got me an appointment with a casting director who was casting for a K3vin B4c0n movie about kids at a summer camp (I had no acting aspirations, but my family and I figured it was worth a shot. And why not?). They were impressed with me and asked me to come back for a second audition.

Then the funding for the movie fell through and it was never made.

None of my school friends believed a word of this story.

Conclusion: incredibly, this puts me two degrees of separation from K3vin B4c0n.

3. My grandparents used to have a place in Miami, and we vacationed there from the time we were babies. I was a very active child and the seniors there used to fight over who got to watch over me.

There's one really cute picture of me, in a swimming pool, in the arms of a man who was in my grandparents' circle of friends.

Twenty minutes after that picture was taken, the man was dead. After posing for the pic, he left the pool, got dressed, walked a few blocks to the butcher shop, had a heart attack and died instantly.

wait, is it one degree?

the connection is me -> casting director -> KB

2.I was nearly murdered by my mom's second husband when I was 3.. he tried to drown me very slowly. I was rescued only because a friend of my grandmother's walked by, saw what was happening, and then called the police. This man had also talked about wanting to replace my blood with his. My family has been very very quiet about talking about him to me this day.. He and my mom never got formally divorced... separated at most. She still has his last name to this day -- the guy who tried to kill me when I was 3... like it's some deep dark secret that no one dare mention. Very Stephen King element in my life.

3.Reposted from the Ally = Valley! thread and also from the claims to embarrassing and minor fame stories thread:
(stretches out them old, weary, typed-out knuckles for ol' storytime...)

Allrightie, back in 1982 or 1983, my folks thought it would be "really cute" if I went on a game show. Being a fan of game shows at the time, I was quite excited. And living in westside Los Angeles, there were plenty of easily driveable opportunities to do just that. Unfortunately, there was only room for a taping of a pilot of a rehash of "The Dating Game". At that point, I became more apprehensive, but my folks goaded me into doing it, saying "Oh, come on! Didn't you always want to be in TV?"...

Don't ask me why, but given the scarce amount of participants, I somehow made it past the screening processes, being shy and socially inept for an 11-year-old and all. Fast forward to day of taping, skipping all the silly details in between..

Taping happens, blah blah. It's looking pretty obvious that Bachelor #2 (me) was obviously cast as the token "dork" bachelor, as the wishy- washiness of my answers would make Charlie Brown seem like Mr. T.

Anyway, the bachelorette. Oh yes, the wonderful little prissy princess that was the bachelorette. Keep in mind -- valley girl has struck it BIG in America as a big trend -- so out comes our little Tarzana sweetheart... introduction is made, etc. etc. etc.

Her name: Tunia Flambe.

Yes. Pronounced "Toonya Flambay"... Single hair clip, glittery shoes, fake gum chewing maneuvers and all... but with a disingenuous Tina Yothers quality to her.

I refuse to go into detail on what may still possibly be the most embarrassing moment of my life, but I do remember one of her questions to Le Bachelors: "Ok, so like we're going out getting ice cream.. and, like, this BIG DUDE, like, comes and threatens to steal me away and make me his.. would you, like,.. fight for me?"

Well, obviously, I didn't win.. that, ahem, lucky honor went to the Jason Hervey/Jason Batemen/Ricky Schroeder wannaba guy to my left. But of course, what's the staple consolation on any episode of "The Dating Game"? Right, you have to walk over, have some announcer guy bellow out a cheap 17-word bio on you, you walk over and hug the bachelorette.

Well I did that. Except that the hug was obviously too ambitious, as she slightly jerked, quickly whipped her hair back, and made a little "I'm annoyed" breathing sound, followed by "like... my hair."

The pilot never made it to TV. The next version (that would have Jeff MacGregor as the host) would actually become popular, but not mine.. which is easily the best thing to result from all of this.

That would end my fascination with valley girls for a long time to come -- until I'd realize, years later, that Moon Unit Zappa was still a cutie.

2. I won $4,600.00 on blink-and-you-missed-it VH1 game show, "Name that Video." I missed the grand prize due to my failure to recognize an REO Speedwagon video.

3. I'm missing part of my left eyelid, I have two pencil points permanently embedded in my person (face and thigh), I have a deviated septum and I suffer from the following largely insignificant maladies: Tinnitus, Benign Positional Vertigo and Oral Allergy Syndrome.

1. when i was 13, a "friend of mine" sucker punched me and knocked out my five front teeth. i had only recently gotten my braces put on and my teeth were loose from all the adjustments. they popped right out, but were dangling there from the wire (sorry for the graphic nature of the story). they put them back in (i still have all my teeth, except for the front left one which broke when i was young and is capped). i had to get 5 rootcanals. the punch resulted in me not being able to fix my underbite and when i was 19 i had to get jaw surgery. i now have a plate in my upper jaw, three screws in my chin and one in each side of my jaw. you can see them with xrays, but they don't make the airport buzzer go off.

2. when i was also in jr high, i worked at a flower shop where my mom worked. i pretty much did a lot of sweeping and cleaning. there were two girls that worked there with me, both a year older than i. we used to stay later than all the rest of the staff and they'd be really flirty and let me put my hands on their breasts. one time one of them told me to go into the bathroom with her, pulled down my pants, got on her knees, started laughing and ran out to laugh with her friend.

3. similar to kate's story, i was on a bus with my entire highschool, going to some camping trip and had to pee like a racehorse, but they wouldn't let us off. i was sitting next to a girl that i wasn't really close to, pulled a pillow over my lap and peed into a snapple bottle. i don't think she appreciated it, nor did her friends who later looked at me with disgust. when you gotta go, you gotta go.

2. I once got punched in the nose for no reason by a drunken brit

3. I had a polygraph examination yesterday

HOTT!

When I was 12 one of my parents went apeshit and bent back my thumb until it broke, resulting in me wearing a cast for a month. Now I can crack that knuckle at will. I also had 2 other fingers broken by other family members, 1 on purpose and 1 by accident.

I enjoy scavenging for valuables, I'm currently surfing net on a really nice computer with a 19" monitor worth a few hundred that came from the trash. It was thrown out because of a virus. I wiped the hard drive and installed a new OS and it works perfectly.

Well, I've no idea where or how I developed it, but I suffer from intensely violent allergy attacks in the Spring and Fall of the sneezing/sinus blitzkrieg/eyes-as-fawcets variety. I'm also allergic to apples, pears, peaches, plums, strawberries, beets and almonds (so far....there may be other things as well). After the birth of our daughter, I went to an allergist to get to the bottom of it (and see if there's any chance that our daughter might avoid the same fate). Apparently, she has a fifty percent chance of having allergies as intense as mine (my wife, conversely, has no allergies that she's aware of). The are treatments for it, but they involve --- literally -- and injection in the arm every week for two years (or something ridiculous like that), and I'm not interested in that. Gimme some kleenex and skip the fruit tray and I'll be fine.

2. I ran track and cross country in junior high. I was at the regional championship meet and I had the sudden urge to shit before the race started. I was sitting on the toilet, unable to acutally go because the stalls had no doors and I had stage fright, when the final call for the race was announced. So I pulled up my pants and ran down to the starting line, my shit basically sitting on deck at my anus. I tried to hold it in, I really did, but I was so exhausted from the run that I couldn't hold it anymore and shat my pants with maybe .25 or .50 miles to go. Luckily I was wearing short spandex type things under my shorts, so nothing fell out. My parents helped me clean up. Brave people.

3. When I was in elementary school: one day I was at home and had watched the episode of the Cosby Show where Theo gets a bag of gag gifts called "Bag O' Gags." This somehow inspired me to come up with "Bag O' Poop." So I got a paper bag, shat into it, wrote "Bag O' Poop" on it, and dropped it over the wall into my neighbor's yard. I never heard anything about it after that.

2. I was cured of this when my parents bought me an Atari and I played Space Invaders for two weeks straight. No more motor coordination problems after that.

3. When I was 13 or 14, I attended a short playwriting-for-kids workshop and impressed the teacher enough that she asked me if I'd be her assistant director on an "experimental" production of Alice in Wonderland she was doing at a local community theater. This turned out to be a very bad idea for her--I really had no aptitude for it--and it was a sort of cursed production--one of the actors died unexpectedly after we'd been rehearsing for a few weeks, and was replaced by her identical twin sister, which freaked everyone out.

2. when i walk or hike for over 15 minutes, my thighs start itching unbearably and i have to stop. i have no idea what this is about.

3. then there's my infamous band drama. i was in a huge fight with a bandmate and her boyfriend over dumb stuff that ultimately seemed to me to be about control. i became irrationally afraid of them. i feared going back to my house in case they left messages for me (her yelling, him mumbling passive-aggressively), i feared leaving in case i ran into them. i started going to therapists since my reaction was so irrational. they were all i could think/worry/talk about for weeks (months?). then i got a call at work. someone told me he killed himself with a knife in her house. and i shook with shock but wasn't actually surprised. i felt kinda relieved. maybe even more than kinda. which i guess is fucked up. but so was he. no hard feelings now. r.i.p.

2. My right ear has a worse hearing than my left. This could be fixed with an operation, but I haven't done anything about it yet because I'm afraid of operations.

3. My biggest turn-on is tummies, especially round ones. I've never had sex with a really skinny girl, and I'm not sure whether I'd enjoy it as much.

5. Among my closest friends, I've French kissed at least 4 of them, in a non-jokey manner.

Donut Christ - Blimey! Its a fucking miracle you've made it this far.

2. My phobias are: jellyfish, needles (incl. seeing girls put earrings in), heights, the phone ringing late at night, and balloons.

3. My second cousin was briefly notorious for accidentally leaving top-secret naval plans on a canal towpath.

1) I have a barely-noticeable scar on my forehead, from a car crash at the age of 10 (I wasn't driving myself). Although it's barely noticeable now, the compensation money was what got me through university.

2) My most "wow!" moment with wild animals was when a country fox, stalking its prey, crept up to within a couple of metres of me without spotting me. At the time I was standing in a wood, masturbating.

3) If you total up all my sexual partners, it comes to exactly 50% male, 50% female.

4) When I was 3, I could read well enough to be able to take a newspaper, find the TV listings and see what was on the telly, or find out when my favourite shows were on.

over a glass of Le Piat D'or and a fine cigar?

This still happens to me, only flirting with an attractive girl in a club can sometimes trigger it. Bane of my life.

Wilson?

That is indeed VERY freaky!!!

And if you laid them end to end..?

2. At the age of seven I was the youngest person to stand on the stage at the Irvine Burns Club and recite Tam O Shanter in it's entirity.

3. The doctor has told me that if I get tonsilitis again they've to come out.

I guess job interviews and funerals are out of the question for you then, eh?

2. I have never broken a bone in my life.

3. I have had anal sex twice (not receiving). The second, and last, time my g/f got a little too relaxed. After finishing I ran straight into the shower and washed for what seemed like a month. When I got out she had put my sheets in the wash and could do nothing but apologize non stop. I sent her home. Even on her way out she could not even say good-bye, just "I'm so sorry"; looking like she was about to cry. We dated for many years and are still friends but have never spoken about that incident.

(xpost)

But then again, what are anonymous online personas for.

xpost :: yes.

2) A friend and I once got in trouble with TEH LAW in junior high because we decided to walk home without shirts on. My mom threw a bitch fit about it--at the police, because she thinks if "gross, hairy, sweaty men" can be topless outside all the time, we should've been allowed to be too. It started a campaign on her part protesting unfair indecency laws. She still sometimes writes letters to the newspapers if she sees similar "indecency" stores.

3) I have a really odd aversion to Japan and never want to visit there, though I'd go if other people I were vacationing with really wanted to. If I was vacationing in Asia, I'd rather go to China, the Philippines, or even Korea. Strangely, though, 90% of the food I eat is Japanese food.

2. I didn't light a match until I was a senior in college. When I was a kid, I was afraid of fire, and I never really needed to light matches. But once I got older and realized that it was somewhat unusual that I had never done so, I decided to make my match-virginity a deliberate act of celibacy. I wanted to see how long it would last. Then one day, I was having coffee and cigarettes with my girlfriend, and there was a matchbook on the table, and without really thinking about it, I struck it. The end.

3. When I was in middle school, I suffered from gynecomastia, which basically means that I had boobs. Now before my growth spurt, I was already a chubby kid, but the boobs were unfortunately incommensurate with the rest of the fat on my body, and predictably, I got teased a lot in gym class. (After running around the perimeter of the gym one day, some kid took it upon himself to tell me, "Damn, yours are bigger than some of the girls in here!") So, over spring break of 8th grade, I had cosmetic surgery to remove the fatty deposits under my chest, and now I have two smile-shaped scars along the bottom half of my aereolae.

1. attended spacecamp
2. once had a nintendo induced seizure
3. direct descendent of louis riel (great-great-great-great-uncle)

OK< here's how big a dork I am, I want to make Japanese import kits of fighters and bombers that would have fought in the later 1940s if WWII had went on longer!

Also, the new username is cool. I'm going to watch it this weekend in honor of it. I've always been in love with Zorg's secretary!

hmm. this probably doesn't count as surprising...

I'll think of two interesting things in a second.

2. Over half my sex partners have had names beginning with K or a hard C, including a passel of Karens.

3. I have never smoked a cigarette.

Unfortunately the year was 1993 so I had to decline the grandmas.

2. I have a scar on my tongue

3. I was repetedly molested by a 14 year old girl when I was 8. But I enjoyed it, so it probably isn't right to call it molestation.

1) Back in 1995, 1996 or so, I posed nude for a friend's oil painting, which she worked at on and off for several months. We'd figure out a good spare afternoon for her to come over to work on it, which she did for a couple of hours at a time while we chatted about this and that. I believe the painting is unfinished, and I've never seen it, as she only wanted to show it when it was done. Quite possibly the painting is of something else entirely, but odder has happened.

2) In 1989 or so, my then-roommate and I were extremely annoyed with a fairly obnoxious dork of a computer nerd on our dorm floor the previous year -- this wasn't because he was a nerd per se (hell, I'm one), he was just really horrible in general. So we figured out his current address as well as that of his folks', took about two hundred or so of those postcard inserts from magazines that allow you to sign up for a subscription (via the 'bill me later' approach) and proceeded to make his life miserable thanks to overflowing mailboxes, massive bills and general confusion. Our piece de resistance = sending a gift subscription from his dad to him for The Advocate. This kept up for about a year before we were eventually caught; after some apologies and paying for costs it was all let go.

3) In about 1991 or so, I recorded a song called "Sid and Syd" with the help of another roommate and two friends. I sang my own original lyrics, a tribute to Messers Barrett and Vicious. End lyric: "Why did you die?/Why did you fry?" I hope the tape is long, long lost.

2) Related on here before maybe, but the first girl I ever dated in Los Angeles ended up being a porn actress, beginning several weeks after we split and lasting a year. She wound up on the cover of Adult Video News at one point. Her first "film" was actually a compilation video called Stuff It, Vol. 2. She made 70 films and is now a born-again Christian living somewhere in Woodland Hills, CA.

3) One night whilst in college at Fordham LC in NYC, I was coming home on the subway late one night very drunk and began chatting up Tim Curry(!). I told him he was quite good in The Hunt For Red October and he said, "Ahh yes, too bad about Patriot Games, ehh?" I told him, "dude so fuckin' true" and then he reached his stop and left. I think the conversation lasted 20 seconds.

2. i freak out at people who touch my neck without me expecting it. i figure that by screaming at them enough they will get the idea that i don't EVER find it funny or nice.

3. i have never been offered pot. that is why i have never smoked it.

2) I have a strange fear of low ceilings. Sometimes, albeit rarely, I'll be driving in parking garages that have low ceilings, and I get psychosomatic headaches that last until I drive out.

3) I don't drink soda at all anymore and never will again. It started as a way of keeping my bills down at fast food joint, just getting a burger and fries and drinking water instead. After awhile I realized I didn't want soda anymore. In fact, I didn't want fast food anymore. Now all I drink is juice and water. And of course beer once a week.

2. When I was 15 I was sickeningly in love with a friend of mine but was terrified to telling her because she moved in a much cooler faster crowd, ie: she dated guys who were out of high school. My parents decided to move back to California and our move happened just a week after she slit her wrists and was hospitalized. I only saw her once before we moved and the next three years of my life I was so miserable and anxiety ridden I got bleeding ulcers which ultimately led to me needing surgery the day after I graduated from high school. I am still significantly damaged by all of this probably and would benefit from therapy if I had the time and money.

3. I wrote a 3000 page science fiction novel at one point in my life. It's terrible.

2. A couple of months later, I was training for a marathon and doing an 8 mile run throught the middle of town. I was running on the sidewalk and while approaching a driveway to a market, I saw a woman who was driving her car and not seeing my approach. I thought, "This woman is going to hit me" so I slowed down. But then she made a sharp left turn directly at me, so I was forced to improvise. I managed to plant one hand on her hood and jump straight up, but the only place to come down was in the middle of her hood since she was coming directly at me. I came crashing down on her hood, making a loud noise and leaving a nice dent. She lept from the car, thinking she'd killed me and screaming in panic. She didn't believe me when she said I was okay, so I just took off running again. And since she had been trying to go the other direction, she didn't bother following me. I ran the next six miles pain free.

3. I should have been on the plane from Boston that hit the WTC.

http://www.coolout.racknine.net/img/skylinegtrmodel.jpg

I'm probably going to work on a few more since the apartment I moved into a few months back has a good space for spraypainting.

I did not have sex with a man (now my exclusive pref) til I was out of college.

I performed standup comedy in my 20s, and regularly did late nights before tiny audiences at NYC's Original Improv in 1990-91 (unaware that the owner was clueless and fast-tracking it to oblivion). My act got polite praise from pre-sitcom Brett Butler, Dave Attell hogged the mike while MCing, and I got to see young Chris Rock when he was really inept.

2. I'm excessively flexible. I can put both of my legs behind my head, and I used to be able to walk on my hands while doing this. One time during inside recess, I was showing off for a girl I had a crush on my putting my legs behind my head (a tactic I only use on certain occasions now.) She said, "No one wants to see your butt." I was completely crushed.

3. For a period of about 4 years from when I was 7 to 11 I was one of the best swimmers in my area. One of my secret tactics during relay races/backstroke was to pee in the pool before we had to get in the "ready" position. I won High Point for my age group 3 of those 4 years, and I'm still pretty sure that's the reason why.

To this day I remember how embarrassing that was having the class drop to silence in observance of a giant wet spot on my ass. I still have no idea what caused it, but thankfully it hasn't happened since.

2. My granny once barged into my room and offered me a chip while my girlfriend was giving me a blow job.

3. I got caught smoking dope on stage in the school assembly hall by a nun.

I feel as if I have progressed in life!

2) I had chronic infections in my right ear from age 2 up until about age 20. They were pretty gruesome things, too - there's nothing quite like a broken, pus-discharging eardrum, accompanied by flu symptoms, loss of balance, and a temporary inability to hear musical pitch properly. The infections cleared up after I stopped drinking milk and curbed my dairy intake.

3) There was a campaign to "out" me when I changed high schools in 12th grade. It started out as a "let's mess with the new guy" prank and ballooned to the point where some random jocks (who'd heard the rumours third-hand) wanted to beat the shit out of that faggot new kid. I'm straight, but often get tagged as femme because of my choices in music and clothes. My girlfriend says I'm becoming more classically masculine over time, though - maybe just out of a subconscious desire to avoid situations like the one in my high school.

1. My wrists click
2. I had my tonsils taken out when I was in the 6th grade
3. In 7th grade I won the school's geography bee, taking down my older sister in the finals

2. When I was a senior in high school, I was given an award for writing at an assembly at which the entire school was present. When my name was called, I was so nervous that when climbing down the bleachers (our assemblies were always held in the gym), I tripped over the last row and fell flat on my face. No one said a single word, and when I got to the microphone, I said 'and for my next trick...' and they all burst into laughter. I was, though I tried to hide it, mortified and I wanted to die.

3. I had a green mohawk for one day when I was a teenager.

that, we need pictures of

2. I peed my pants during a science test in 7th grade.

3. In 1988, I wrote a 250-page thesis comparing the situation and literature of women in West and East Germany. The wall came down a year later.

2.  My father was Tough Shit in his teen years. He was a member of a street gang back when they settled disputes by street fights and shortly before gangs graduated to using knives. He was also an amateur boxer who taught me how to box when I was a preteen -- I spent several years of my life sitting through boxing matches with him, too, and as a result can tell which boxers are shit and which ones are awe-inspiring after just a short period of observation. (e.g. "Dude! You're leaving your body WIDE OPEN there, you stupid!") And I JUST FOUND THIS OUT TODAY -- my dad and his two closest associates ONCE TRIED POT. But Dad said it made him feel "weird", apparently, so he never touched the stuff again. Speaking of these friends of his -- their story would make for a good movie, I'm convinced.

3.  My dad was an alcoholic for the first seven years of my parents' marriage. He stopped when Mom had enough and threw him out. And my maternal grandfather had a slight drinking problem which often resulted in lots of embarrassing moments for my mother when she was a young girl. (According to what Mom tells me, Grandpa was a genial drunk and his embarrassing actions included nonharmful things such as slurring at passers-by while standing on the front lawn.) So now you know why I've been gunshy about really getting into alcoholic beverages.

ouch.

ditto. see upthread

donut christ, you deserve the most kick-ass life humanly possible. After all that drama that occurred in the first few years of your life, you MORE than deserve it.

4.  If people who attended grade and high school with me knew about # 2, they would be INCREDIBLY surprised. I actively avoided conflict of almost any kind up until perhaps my junior year of high school, when I started feeling the need to protect myself. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I totally forgot my boxing lessons at the first sign of conflict. Yeah, fortunately. They always catch the second agitator, don't they?

5.  The first time I ran across someone who was not related to me but who had the same last name I had was when I entered high school. Before that, I and the other members of my family with this last name were the only people I knew who had that last name. Nowadays, I see that last name all over the place, it seems.

6.  Up until I was 21, I did not utter a single curse word in front of my parents, nor did I say anything stronger than "God" or "damn". When I was 21, however, I slipped up and said "damn" in front of my mom, who then proceeded to slap me HARD. I was too shocked to say anything else. But then, a year later, I started being able to say "damn" in front of my parents without them going psycho over it. Now, I say everything but "fuck" in front of my mom. Oh yeah, and "bastard". That word is still seriously verboten in my mom's company.

(xpost)

I have yet to see Million Dollar Baby, actually! We only just got it in locally, like, last week or something. But if Hilary Swank did indeed train for six months, I can see how she would've done a great job for what she was trying to accomplish. (I also want to see that film, BTW!)

2. I used to sleepwalk. (the last time was years ago when i walked up one floor to my old apartment -i had moved one floor down- NAKED and used the new tenant's bathroom. They weren't home at the time. They were nice enough to leave their front door open.I remembered all this in the morning. When I was a kid I would have a nightmare, walk downstairs, and sit at the kitchen table wondering how I would ever get out of the horrible nightmare I was in. Then I would walk back upstairs to bed, get in bed, and fall right back into the same dream.)

3. If someone sticks their finger in my mouth when I'm yawning I freak out and want to kill them.

Scott, hon, thank GOD you grew out of those migraines!! Ugh, you poor thing, having to deal with that as a little boy.

my mom only began swearing in her late forties. she's not very good at it--you can almost see the quotation marks around the words she says.

Thank you.. although, thank f'ing lord, I don't remember #1 and #2.. also #3 is hardly drama as much as just a cute, embarrassing moment that now makes great storytelling fodder. :)

(I was told once, though, by an aspiring psychologist that the fact that I don't harbor any extreme anger towards my natural father not stepfather is a sign of extreme mental abnormality... even though I was barely old enough to remember any of that.. but anyway.)

You've got to be a better man than most, though, to not feel that anger surging through you. I know that it all happened to you at a very early age, but still, these are things you've gone through, and, as such, is a part of your own personal history. Regardless of whether you can remember it or not.

(FYI, there are certain secrets I'm never revealing, not here nor in any other public forum.)

Me too, Dee. At 10-11 months, I had learned the alphabet from looking at the magnetic letters on the refrigerator. About one year later, I was reading.

2. When we moved back to Mississippi in 1975, my father cleared a four-acre lot of trees and brush to plant grass on. He would go over it with the tractor with a rake attachment, and it was me and my brother's job to go over the whole area and pick up roots. It was miserably hot and dusty work, and after a few days of breathing in topsoil I developed a nosebleed. Local doctor said no big deal, but for the next few weeks whenever I developed a nosebleed I was supposed to cool down and take it easy. After that, every day when we were supposed to be clearing the lot, I would work about 20 minutes then think "fuck this." When nobody was looking I would mash my nose back and forth real hard and get it bleeding, then go in the house and leave my brother to do all the hard work.

3. I have a faint trace on the bridge of my nose of an old scar from a target shooting accident from 1972 or so. The pistol was really heavy, so instead of holding it out at arm's length, I squatted down and propped my left arm on my knee, and got my face right behind the pistol. It wasn't a revolver — it was one where the top of it opens up to eject the bullet casing. In this case, the thing opened up back into my nose.

2. I spent a year studying AUSLAN (Aus sign language) at work in the mid 90s. I got to the stage where I could clumsily converse with deaf associates, though they'd always have a good laugh at my crap signing - sort of the sign equivalent of bad accents, I guess. I can still fluently sign the alphabet, and swear at people.

3. I have an extreme neurosis about anything getting into my ears and/or blocking them. Wax or water blocking my ear up terrifies me, and lord help anyone who dares trying to stick in a finger or tounge, they'd get punched. It has happened before, I can't control it. If I get blocked/painful ears from a head cold, I'm in hysterical tears. I had middle ear infections and operations as a kid which has caused this I guess. I still have a long neat scar behind my left ear.

Oh wow, I punched myself in the eyes a few times when I was about 10 to simulate conjunctivitis so I could stay home from school. I'd forgotten all about this till I read your post.

This is sort of strange! I mean, that it's happened.

I mean what the fresh hell.

This is also true for me. Although I do it to my cat all the time.

I did it to him once. He bit me.

Me too, Dee. At 10-11 months, I had learned the alphabet from looking at the magnetic letters on the refrigerator. About one year later, I was reading

As the mother of a 2-year-old who knows all his letters and is learning to read, I have to say that both of you probably had some help from your parents.

So did I, nya nya.

No seriously, I was 2 1/2, maybe three. I was still going into the bathroom with my Mom, and I looked at the grafiti on the wall and said, "Mom, that says 'Love'"

Pretty soon I was reading books to my nursery school class. There was one kid, Simon, who was really annoying and competitive, and every time I'd read he'd butt in and say "I know how to read too!" and start describing what was going on the pictures.

2. i am obsessed with ufos

3. 4 nipples, etc.

2. I've been arrested once, for possession of stolen property. My brother found a wrecked up bike in a park and brought it home. He didn't care about it as he thought it was just junk, so I took it to a bike shop and had them repair it so I could sell it for money towards a trip we were going to take later that summer (I was 15). The original owner of the bike somehow recognized it, matched the serial number, got the bike shop people to call the police and I was arrested along with my brother, whom I kinda ratted out since he originally found it (yes, I apologized, even though he had peed on me). The officer didn't want to arrest us after we told him the details (why would someone steal a bike and then immediately try to sell it in a bike shop? They agreed that that made no sense), but his sergeant said he had to. All the arrest was was an order to appear at the police station for prints and pictures and then wait for a court date. We did that and my dad cried at the police station. My mom took us to court (where she cried) where the charges were dropped. We didn't even have to apologize. Nineteen years later I'm still bitter even though nothing really bad happened, except for that I had to pay the $75 for the repair bill. Somehow the trip was still fun. I remember going by the bike shop one day in the fall and a couple of the owners were out front and yelled out at me "steal any bikes lately?". I didn't answer. Not even a "fuck you".

3. I let a kid beat me up when I was 13. He was 14 or 15 and probably a little smaller than me, but he seemed tough or something so I just let him throw me around on the grass. If he'd punched me I probably would've fought back but he seemed kinda out of it or something and was saying some shit like I'd lipped him off during a soccer game (I had no recollection of doing this), so I let him beat me up. A crowd of kids gathered to watch this and thought it was pretty funny and jeered me. When he was tired I got up and walked home in shame. Was I was inside I pounded my fists against the floor screaming with tears streaming. The kid apologized to me at school the next day only under threat of violence from an older friend of mine, but it didn't matter. I still don't know why I was so scared. I grew up in tough neighbourhoods and had fought before and did again, but that one time I froze. Somehow I feel like I'll never live it down.

this is awesome.

In my case, they definitely taught me the letters. In order to keep me busy and quiet while they were eating dinner*, they'd tell me "go find an 'A'", and I'd crawl over to the fridge, find it, bring it back, repeat Steps 1-4.

They were geniunely surprised when I started reading. My mother thinks I picked it up from shows like the "Electric Company", which focused on reading.

8. During the last couple of years I've had two instances where I though I might die. First I was hit by a car, second time a seven-foot cart filled with soda bottles fell down on me. Both times I survived with minor injuries. In neither of the cases did my life flash like a film in front of me; at the moment of the accidents I just remember thinking "This would be a really stupid way to die...".

9. When I was in 8th and 9th grade I was bullied quite badly at school. I hated it so much that many times I just didn't go to school. I pretended to go there, but I didn't leave the train when my stop came, and instead rode all the way to the city centre. I knew when my parents would go for work, and I came back home after that. I learned to forge both my mom's and my dad's signature for excuse notes. One time I was home when I was supposed to be at school, and my dad suddenly came in, in the middle of the day. I hid in the attic and stayed there until he left.

2. I have kissed my (female) cousin.

3. When I was nine a girl in my class was bullied, and it turned into a big drama. Her mother was very weird, and somehow I was targeted as the "brain" behind the bullying (I was not, in fact I was having a hard time myself). At a group meeting with the school psychologist I freaked out and ran up to him and started punching him with my fists and sreaming and crying like a maniac. Then I ran to the bathroom and locked the door and stayed there for several hours, teachers and psychologist knocking on the door trying to make me come out. This all resulted in the school shrink calling my parents questioning them about my family environment since he thought I was abnormally agressive.

OTM. I was recently in a really bad car accident (hit a barrier, spun, and nearly flipped over on the highway going almost 80) and I had the same thought.

5. When I was sixteen I woke up ever night at 3.14, and though I hadn't sleep-walked prior or since, during the course of one month I'd wake and find myself in really fucking weird places. Most disturbingly: in the driver's seat of my car.

6. The first 'grown-up' book I read (siΩce we've taken a turn toward discussing our precocious literary habits) was Richard Adams' Watership Down which I read because I was doubly-obsessed with rabbits and Communism.

6a. I had a strange, long, and inexplicable fascination with the countries of Georgia and Lithuania and for my 9th birthday wanted to have a Lithuania-themed party before my parents talked me into a Sherlock Holmes-themed one. I didn't remember this until I started talking about Watership Down upthread.

I'm not sure what to make of this fact.

Ha, the first grownup book I read was Fear of Flying because I found it in my mom's closet and it talked about girl parts.

that is AWESOME

i could read at 1 1/2. i'm not exaggerating.

2. I have had a crush on the same person, for 3 years. (amongst others)

3. my name for DJing, for the last year or so, is "Romo". (please don't laugh. it's purely a pun on my name, not the NME hyped scene of back in the day, I am kind of stuck with it now.)

2. When I get bright light shined into my eyes after being in a relatively dark (including average office lighting) environment I sneeze once or twice. I read a article about this once and it's not that uncommon.

3. I'm pretty mild-mannered, but 7 years ago I went to the H3d0nism II resort in Jamaica for a week, spending most of each day nude.

2. I was in Utamaru across the way from HMV in Shibuya.

3. I know know what goes on in Koganecho.

so do i now

- I don't believe my parents had any sort of role at all in my learning how to read, aside from maybe mentioning to each other what various street signs read. That was the first thing I knew how to read, so that might possibly be it. And every time my mother would try to read me something, I would always pretest, "No, Mommy, *I* want to read it!" And read I would.

- One of the grade schools I attended (the one where I graduated from, in fact) featured a converted WWII-era barracks building as a combination cafeteria/school hall/parish hall. It was condemned five years before I graduated, yet it still kept on serving meals to us students. Not at all coincidentally, the year I had the least stomach problems while attending classes there was my last year, i.e. eighth grade. Why? Because at that school, one of the rights that come with being an eighth grader is that you got pizza lunches every Friday. All you had to do was show up with $5 on that day and you got pizza and soda. Everyone always made it a point to participate in pizza Fridays.

- One of my cousins is one of the individuals who walked out of the redistricting special session the Texas House of Representatives held sometime either last year or the year before. (They ended up holing up inside a New Mexico hotel for several weeks, until the special session ended.) I've met this man numerous times before at various functions and have actually driven his mother around once.

- I have a small chicken pox scar on the right side of my torso. It was from a particularly itchy bump I couldn't keep myself from scratching.

- I was born with no arches on my feet. I had to wear corrective footwear until my arches started coming in. (Now I have perfectly normal arches -- yay!)

- I'm one of those people whose normal body temperature runs a little low, i.e. somewhere around 97.5 degrees F. Even when it's the middle of the summer, I will be able to take my temperature on a day when I feel healthy and it will still be around that reading, not exceeding 97.8. If I have a reading of 98.6, I consider myself as having a low-grade fever.

- I really should be getting to sleep (and can hear a fellow ILXor nag me from afar right about now).

- Oh yeah, and there's one secret I have kept inside of me for well over a decade that I'm not about to reveal anywhere in public. I seriously doubt I will ever tell more than the one or two people this thread has inspired me to confide in.

(I'm ecstatic others were early readers, FYI.)

Oh yeah, and there's one secret I have kept inside of me for well over a decade that I'm not about to reveal anywhere in public. I seriously doubt I will ever tell more than the one or two people this thread has inspired me to confide in.

Oh come now, Dee, we always knew you were secretly Mrs. Nick Rhodes. ;-)

that's awesome!

2. my grandmother is from new delhi. american parents, but she lived there for a good chunk of her life and so i grew up with a grandma with a bastardized sort of north indian roots and influences. i'm hungry now.

3. first record at age 7: night ranger "midnight madness" $7 at camelot music in the mall. (it was that, billy idol, purple rain, or duran duran.)

4. first grown-up book: moby dick... i was glutton for punishment. i seem to recall my parents giving us $1 for each book we read. and for some completely loony reason, i chose the monster large moby dick. i must have run out of other books. come to think of it, i don't think i ever got the money. my parents probably didn't realize that i would just go and start reading like a lunatic. "oh, watch him read a book or two a month. it'll be great!" 70 or 80 books later... "ah, we're gonna spend that money on new sneakers."

Well... it really isn't a big secret if ya think about it... plus, a the myth she's trying to spread that she is an understanding woman ... my position is this: just because you are into kissing rock star ass does not mean you're a kind person... all it means to me is that you kiss ass...

2. For all three years when I was in Junior High School, I had a chronic immune disorder that caused me to miss at least 50 days of school a year, and only attend class till noon the rest of the days. Usually I would go to school and the teacher would ask if anyone was absent and someone would say "Laura" even though I was sitting right there. The disease inexplicably and completely disappeared before I entered 9th grade.

3. I have been offered money for sex/sex-related acts on three distinct occasions in two foreign countries.

4. I have only loved two men in my life, and they had the exact same birthday.

2. I once shat myself after doing too much acid and subsequently spent two hours in a cold bath with Ice Cube's "Call up my homies and I'm aksing y'all/What court are y'all playing basketball?" going round and round in my head in a locked groove.

3. My first marriage is a testament to the amount of drinking I was doing at the time.

Ha ha ha ha. Ew no, though -- that'd mean I'd actually have to be, y'know, Meredith Ostrom. *shudders* Nonononono -- that'd be twenty billion different shades of wrong. (Besides, I'm not quite blonde or heiress-y enough to be hooked up with the Rhodester.)

that's awesome!

:) The whole family, regardless of ideology (*ahemthiswouldbebackwhenIwasstillafull-onRepub*), cheered him and his colleagues on because we were uneasy with the redistricting efforts, and because, hey, one of those guys was a relative of ours!

I have only loved two men in my life, and they had the exact same birthday.

Whoa. Freaky coincidence, Laura.

(Shuffling back to bed now....)

i was attracted to a female friend in college. i was confused by that, since i hadn't been attracted to a woman before. and nobody since.

i was on japanese tv once.

i have this weird compulsion to rub and poke at my eyes a lot. i hate it, but have trouble kicking the habit.

When I was 16 I was knocked off my bike by a car. Happily it was in a caravan site so the car was only doing about 5mph! I walked away with nary a scratch.

I have never said so much as "shit" in front of my mum. I think "crap" is the most vulgar I get with her. She used to scold me for saying "oh my god". Heh.

2. I get nosebleeds way too often, usually about once a week, unless I'm having my period or in a new climate, in which case I have them daily. I have no idea why this is but I'm pretty used to it.

3. I've mentioned this, but I've interviewed Kevin Bacon in person, making you all one degree away.

1. I am sure I cannot have a serious romantic relationship with a PC (as opposed to Mac) user. This is a very zen state of affairs, that does make sense if you think about it enough.

2. Although I am generally accepting of all races/cultures etc. I have developed a prejudice against immigrant Russian women. This comes from being the victim of Russian car insurance scams and dealing with Russian immigrant mail-order bride types. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

3. I played Nurse Ratched in my high school's production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I know his dad!

sundar: I'm fairly confident that you play more often than I ever did--I never had that problem, my calluses gave out before my joints ever did.

milli vanilli?

2.) When I was twelve or thirteen, I wrote a really cool story about a police car going off of the side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Unfortunately, the story was interspersed with a really awful "erotic" story that I also composed. I eventually took the stories out to these rocks behind my house, stuck them into a paper milk carton, and set the whole thing on fire.

I really wish that I still had that police car story.

3.) I swear to God that I saw a website that predicted the September 11th attacks. Not in the vague Nostradamus way, but in a "planes will attack Manhatten's skyscrapers" kind of way. I tried to find the site again that very night, but it had been removed.

I'm sure you can't tell from my posts.

More of these, please.

2)My favourite holiday was an impossibly idyllic two weeks in a narrow-boat, travelling around Worcestershire and the West Midlands. The glorious weather, the locks, the weightless pace at which we drifted down the unending canals...it was both a holiday and a glimpse of that ungraspable eternity of motionlessness.

3) I used to be a mad keen ornithologist, and would go to nature reserves with my dad and brothers, binoculars in one hand, bird ID book in the other, and pick up tips from more seasoned 'twitchers'. Whenever I saw a new bird for the first time I would add it to my 'checklist', and would eagerly talk about my findings in school the next Monday. Of course, I grew up and discovered sport'n'music, but I KNOW that one day, one fine day, I shall return to birdwatching. I've still got the knack; I can still recognise almost anything someone points out to me in passing. When I was young, I thought it was all about the competitive spirit, sighting as many new birds as I could, but I now know that the real reason I loved it was the sheer joy of placing oneself within the entirely natural context of such wild, untamed creatures. I was there, with the birds, and, briefly, no mortal thought could interrupt my rapture.

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), November 9th, 2005 2:09 PM. (jaymc)

haha!

2) My Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother feeds a bunch of mangy black strays on her back porch. Last year one gave birth to a litter of kittens and she took the litter and buried them alive in her back yard. I haven't been able to look at or treat her the same since.

3) At the end of seventh grade, my friend's hippie parents let us torch all of our school stuff on their gas grill. We were squirting lighter fluid out of the can and burning those synthetic-nylon zip-up binders and all kinds of unhealthy shit. I can't believe no one called the cops or fire department on us.

2) jfk, jr. (john-john) once threw me a touchdown pass in a lunchtime touch football game (we worked together)

3) a very sweet uma thurman once engaged me in conversation at a party but i was so drunk i mumbled something and slinked away :(

1. I use Pampers moist wipes on my adult ass
2. my favorite key is F#minor
3. there are 5 pumpkins in my kitchen right now

2) when I was 19 I thought it would be incredibly stylish of me to have most of my shoulder length hair cut to about an inch short, leaving 3 or 4 unevenly placed long strands, then I dyed half my hair green and the other half pink, straight down the middle. To tell the truth, I still think it was quite stylish, though it's short and green nowadays.

3) My mum is a creationist (possibly the only one outside of America) and my dad thinks the Da Vinci Code is real. Religious discussion in my house is fun fun fun!

4) (Adding a fourth seeing as everyone else seems to be putting near-death ones in.) When I was 12 I got pneumonia and nearly died, I stopped breathing completely at one point. Then all my hair fell out, which I was quite happy about as I'd always wanted really short hair but my parents wouldn't let me cut it as short as I wanted.

2. My first two crushes were on Christopher Reeve (as Superman) and Michael Jackson.

3. My family had a pet parakeet named Penny briefly when I was growing up. We didn't go out and buy her; she was very tame and landed on a hot dog my brother was eating when we were at a private beach we belonged to. That bird was probably some other person's lost pet.

Thats called sleep paralysis; it is terrifying, and quite common. I suspect the drinking is fuckin' with your REMsleep, and that can trigger an attack of paralysis off. Horrid thing to happen.

1. When I was around six or seven I did something wrong and was punished by being sent to my bedroom. I hollered downstairs to my dad a few times about having to go to the bathroom but was told not to leave. I opened my window, which was over the front porch, about the same time my friend, the neighbor girl, came over and was ringing the doorbell asking if I could come out and play. I began pissing through the screen as my mother opened the front door, shocking both of them (though, probably, less my friend).

2. A few (probably four) years later, in a different neighborhood, my friend and I coerced a girl from our neighborhood to 'join our club', which, of course, we had just made up. Expectedly, the terms were for her to show us her vagina. She told her friend, who told her mother, and just after we had cleared up dinner the doorbell rang and the girl and both sets of parents were (though not my accomplice) had arrived for a chat.

3. I haven't had a signifigant (i.e. lengthy, committed, girlfriendy) relationship with a woman who lives within 45 minutes of me.

2. when I was four or so, my foot got caught in the spokes of the back wheel of te bicycle my mother was riding along on. foot was FUCKED UP BAD. I'm OK now though.

3. I can pat head and rub stomach at the same time!

Mine too! Awesome.

2) i've been misquoted by the grauniad

3) i've been in two bands (for about 5 mins each time) with "k3l3" from bl0c p4rty

1. most of my hats are alive
2. i spoon a live rattlesnake in bed
3. i recently hacked into ilx as an admin and upped everyone's SB rating by 1. so the next time someone gets 51ed, it was my fault, and i'd do it again

1. A former Prime Minister of New Zealand once bought me a pint, tho I was unaware of his identity at the time.

Flight of the Conchords lol

xpost early lyrics for "Who do you love?"